Most/many mid-sized roasters use a white-label manufacturer to make their instant. A company in Pennsylvania called Swift does for many. Intelligentsia and Verve use them, for example, and both get good reviews.

This power plant is specced to produce 7.65GW. The Alvin W. Vogtle plant in Georgia, the largest nuclear plant in the US, generates only 4.5GW.

Booooo! ha ha this is information I didn’t know I needed and still don’t. It’s like hearing about a hotel down the street holding a concrete canoe contest: entertaining but get off my lawn.

That Fox article on the contest is offhanded, indifferent coverage by the way. Food and Wine at least names the winners here: https://www.foodandwine.com/superior-taste-awards-2026-best-coffees-12013893 and mentions two alternative contests run by competing marketing organizations, which is, after all, all this is. (The source website for this one, https://www.taste-institute.com/ is a members-only popup swamp, I wouldn’t bother.) Anyway I can rest more easily now that I know about contest conquering concrete canoe coffee.

They’ve brewed something (very slowly) that compares well to room temperature espresso? That’s dandy and all, but I wonder how it compares to a proper espresso, after spending additional energy to heat it.

There’s the MHW-3 Bomber R3 Pro, with an adjustment fineness of 15µm per click (burr movement), the Timemore C5 Pro Esp (specifically the Esp version), 15µm/click, the Kingrinder K6 at 16µm, the Timemore Millab M01 at 12.5µm, the Kinu Phoenix (stepless). The Kingrinder and Timemore are the most price friendly, but the 1Zpresso J-Ultra is the one to get, inexpensive for the quality, and 8µm/click.

Lance seems quite smitten. I haven’t used my RB much, don’t take me to the bank, but the soup shots I have tried are surprisingly espresso-like: thick, viscous, engaging. Most surprisingly, they have (edit: can have) that curious espresso flavour, but specialty bean characteristics are submerged in mud, to my palate.

Maybe I’m not doing it quite right? Nor have I done it drastically wrong. The soup program seems to be foolproof on the RB at least for the basics. Personally this is not usually the coffee I want to drink. Pour-over is my mania, but RB scratches the itch for straight espresso pretty effectively.